“Come on, Pippa,” he said, taking away her empty cup and ignoring her indignant wail. She liked to trail the last drops over his bedsheets. Like magic, Keating appeared with a large tub of steaming water. During the last month he and Keating had worked out a routine.

With a practiced hand Alex stripped off Pippa’s nightgown and plopped her in the water. Ignoring the little waves splashing over the side of the tub, he scrubbed her clean. Then he smoothly pulled her squirming plump self out of the bath, handing her to Keating, who waited with a large towel. Pippa was fairly silent, meaning that she only yelled three or four times. And they weren’t the terrified wails that disturbed the whole household, only loud yelps. Keating bore her off into the next room to get dressed, while Alex took a quick bath and dressed himself.

Too bad Keating couldn’t simply be her nanny, Alex thought, remembering the embarrassed Miss Virginia waiting on the floor above. Pippa was gurgling away in the next room, while Keating sang a little ditty to her. Alex cocked his ear. It was clearly a seafaring song, and probably not fit for young—or any—female ears.

He sighed. Time to rejoin Miss Virginia. The last nanny had lasted only two days, worn out, she said, by screaming hysteria. She suggested that Alex send Pippa to an asylum for treatment; Alex only barely stopped himself from tossing her into the street without any baggage.

Pippa toddled into the room smiling widely. “Papa!” she said. “Papa!”

Alex looked at his small daughter. She was perhaps a year old. Maria had died so quickly that he never found out exactly when Philippa was born. And the only way he could find out was to contact the priest, or ex-priest, whom Maria married after annulling their marriage, and that he refused to do. Besides, once he got the measure of the screaming child Pippa seemed to be, his only thought was to get her back to doctors in England.

But on their fourth day together, Pippa had stopped struggling against his arms and simply looked up at him. “Papa,” she said softly. And with growing confidence, “Papa, Papa, Papa.” Since then she screamed only when he wasn’t either with her or in the next room. The minute he tried to leave, she split the air with riveting screams, or worse, lay down on the floor and had hysterics. It was, he guessed, the fruit of her mother’s illness and death. Doctors varied from suggesting institutionalization to saying she’d grow out of it.

Alex’s jaw tightened. He needed a wife. Men weren’t supposed to be bathing infants or choosing nannies. Obviously he didn’t pick nannies very well. Miss Virginia was the fifth in two weeks. He scooped up Pippa and headed to the nursery.